River gods are conventionally bearded, so we need to ask why in Danubian lands a few are young and beardless. Since studying the Haimos and other topographic
types, I, too, have wondered about what they hold. The reeds and other
marsh plants are obvious enough for a river, but the richly laden brances, as here, may have fruits that they specially rejoice in producing, just as the Haimos (the eastern
part of the Balkan range) is shown to have bears (and deer on the Gallus one). My specimen of the Septimius river (and being older, bearded, I think this is Ister,
Danuvius itself) is less detailed than Jochen's, but even on the latter we cannot really identify the tree botanically. To me it looks like a nut tree, but that is just what I like to think. Similarly, I suspect that the young and beardless rivers (rivers when they have source-jars, otherwise topographic but not rivers) are tributaries: rivers near their sources in nymph-springs, but I can't prove that. I ought to have read more Latin poetry!
Pat L.
P.S. A ship's prow included above the reclining river's knee indicates, of course, a navigable river. As for non-river topographics, I can offer this one from a late-10th-century Psalter, a detail from a full-page image of David, like Orpheus, charming the
animals; I didn't know there was a mountain at Bethlehem, but here he is, and, having known the
Paris Psalter picture all my life, I thought of it immediately when I saw the topographic icons (those with no water and sitting more upright) in
Moesia Inferior. There are
river gods in Carolingian Mss, too, but I don't have the pictures at hand.
